This week, Daimler announced plans that you probably thought had transpired three years ago: The Maybach brand is being shuttered.

Well, duh.

It’s too narrow-minded to say that the Maybach wasn’t as good, or as imposing, or as ostentatious as a Rolls-Royce. That’s all true, but the real issue here is twofold: First, Mercedes built the Maybach without building a Maybach brand. Second, the cars didn’t deliver what someone with $450,000 to blow on personal transportation actually wanted.

What’s a Maybach?

Well, go on, tell us. We didn’t mean it rhetorically. Our best bet is that you replied, “A really expensive, pimped-out S-class.” For the few people who even know the brand exists, that view is pretty much universal. “I’d have customers come in, some who bought a few S-classes from us, and they’d ask why we had that ugly customized S-class in the showroom,” a career New York–area Benz salesman tells us.

While Bentley and Rolls can lean on hundred-year heritages of selling to monarchs and oligarchs, Maybach was an obscure brand the first time around, at the beginning of the last century. This isn’t to say Daimler was pursuing an impossible mission when it resurrected the brand; new manufacturers of luxury goods launch every year, and many find success. But there was no moment when someone said, in real-world terms, what Maybach was going to be—other than longer, or more powerful, or more cup-holder-full than a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

Those looking for a vehicle that costs four times as much as an S-class exist somewhere outside the realm of the rational. This is a purchase based on deep emotional appeal; the product needs to fulfill that requirement, but the CEO or oil sheikh in the showroom is also looking to be part of something bigger. When Duesenberg was selling obscenely expensive cars in the 1920s and 1930s, some ads never even showed the car. That brand was built by convincing its nouveau-riche shoppers that the Duesenberg would make them equals of the old-money landed gentry. Daimler, on the other hand, ran an ad campaign for the Maybach showing the old cars in recreated scenes of 1932 Germany bacchanalia.

A Cynical Execution

Planning for some sort of über–S-class began at Daimler-Benz back in the 1990s, before the company was called Daimler or DaimlerChrysler. The car that became the Maybach would use the W140 platform, a cost-no-object feat of engineering that underpinned the S-class from 1992 to 1999. Benz luddites see the W140 as one of the capstones of old-school Mercedes engineering—and so did the suits.

But what this meant was that by the time the Maybach launched in 2002, its basic architecture was already a decade old. Yes, the Maybach’s platform was updated enough that Daimler rechristened it W240, but sitting next to it in showrooms was a highly modern S-class. The Maybach looked and felt dated the day it hit dealers.

“Too much of the interior was similar to the S-class we had at the time,” our dealership confidant tells us. “I couldn’t convince customers that it was a different car.” Interior customization, one of the Maybach’s only major selling points, was not appealing to Americans because of the long waits for special-order work. As a market, we want our cars the day we sign the paperwork, and that’s especially true for the ultra-luxury world.

There were opportunities for Daimler to better differentiate the Maybach from the S-class. A more risk-friendly product planner might have put one of a few Maybach coupe concepts into production. The Exelero coupe, which appeared in 2005, was shocking—whether you liked it or not. The later Xenatec Maybachs, aftermarket coupes constructed by a German coachbuilding company, had far more presence than their four-door compatriots ever did. The only production Maybach with any real unique selling point was the Landaulet. The million-plus-dollar four-door convertible was just right for Monaco, or Dubai, or Newport Beach. Unfortunately, it was too little (or too much), too late.

At this point, the market for cars costing more than $200,000 is still growing—there are an awful lot of One Percenters, after all—and Daimler is definitely in a tough spot. The company that’s all about Mercedes-Benz may never be able to sell a luxury product that tries to top the S-class. It sure won’t call any of them Maybach again, anyway.